2030: How people in the lead became an operationalised reality…
Back in the early 21st Century a set of colleagues — especially inspired by the thinking of Dawn Austwick (then CEO of the National Lottery) — had started to push for an approach to policy, service design and decision making that put people in the lead. In principle, who could disagree with this? Putting people first in the design and delivery of services — nobody. However, it was easier said than done — there were a clear number of hurdles, which despite the naysayers on either side of the table (those representing establishment and those representing the people) were ultimately overcome to have the state of affairs we have today in 2030. So what happened? People’s views are different but here’s mine.
An idea sparked a movement, which sparked change. It seems obvious now but the sector had forgotten it was about the people we were meant to be serving, just as had occurred in our politics and in business in the early 21st Century — to coin a phrase, “it’s the people, stupid”.
All actors in the social system saw the sense of putting people first. It became quickly apparent that powering up people and communities would not be enough — it was about the combination.
An operational methodology emerged for how to manage organisations through such transition — but for organisations to become people led proved hard, really hard. The sector had been used to using organisations as proxies for engaging people, which had become a commoditised process. It meant a real process of encouraging organisations to unleash their people and allow them to be diverse and dynamic individuals, rather than processors of grants or services.
A lot of work developed around participatory funding and harnessing people’s experience, but the more that was pushed towards preparing community-centred people to mix with and collaborate with organisational people, the better the results. The difficulty in building mixed teams played out in challenging relations as people from different backgrounds converged — however a razor sharp focus on the goals, and the spectre of time running out to address such issues meant people pulled together and found resolutions.
This work was one piece of the jigsaw in building a sustainable approach. At the heart of the work was an understanding of the need for sustainability. What this meant was that ‘People in the Lead’ was not the answer in itself — it was a contribution to all the great things we had developed: leadership, teamwork, data, capability building and more. So by today in the year 2030, “People in the Lead” became a value by which we did our work rather than a process to follow in a guidebook.
